


Strange Constellations, and Unquiet Dreams

by unknowabledreamer (DrowningInStarlight)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death In Dream, Dream Sharing, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, Hornets and Wasps, Hurt/Comfort, Magician Adam Parrish, Multi, Night Terrors, Ronan Lynch Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 11:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13879608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/unknowabledreamer
Summary: "It's not real," he managed to whisper."I know, Parrish," Ronan said brokenly. "I know."Or, sometimes dreaming feels like dying, and the Magician and the Greywaren are difficult things to be.





	Strange Constellations, and Unquiet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> (Warning, this fic has some pretty graphic descriptions of weird mindfuckery nightmare stuff.)
> 
> Dedicated to every nightmare I've ever had. Fuck u, I'm a greywaren now. 
> 
> Thanks to my little sister for helping me come up with a bunch of scenes for this, and listening to me talk even though she isn't in this fandom. Thanks a bunch :D 
> 
> Enjoy!

_There's things you need to understand about dreaming, Parrish,_ Ronan had once told him. He'd been distracted before he'd actually had a chance to tell Adam what those things were, but Adam was a fast learner. Ronan dreamt like he did everything else, without shame, without mercy, and with enough anger to destroy the world a thousand times over. _Greywaren._

 

The first thing about dreaming is it's unpredictable. It's impossible to plan for, often impossible to understand. It's occasionally beautiful, sometimes terrifying, always dizzying. Dream logic is crazy and weird, broken until it resembles something far more like panic than order.

The second thing about dreaming is that it's personal. It's every love, every fear, every long hidden desire. It's the strange, subconscious part of the mind, and never has there been a more apt use for the word _unknowable_ , Adam thought. 

The third thing with dreaming is that sometimes, it goes wrong. You get dragged off course, pulled in by dreams that are strong enough to snare you, take you, _keep you._ And sometimes not even the dreamer can get out. 

 

*** 

 

The first thing Adam noticed was the sky. It was broody grey, like snow clouds, but perfectly still, cold as marble. It seemed simultaneously very far away, and so close he couldn't breathe.

The second thing he noticed was the forest. It was weirdly formed, a fever-dream of a world, and went on for as far as he could see, harsh and unending. 

The third thing he noticed was Ronan Lynch. 

He was standing in the snow, as still and as strange as his dream that surrounded them, and for a moment Adam thought he was just another part of the nightmare. But he looked up, and saw Adam standing four paces away, and said "So, you made it, Parrish." 

"Yeah," Adam said slowly. "This isn't Cabeswater." 

"No. It's a dream." 

Adam reached out to touch one of the black trees in front of him. It was cold, strangely lifeless, but it seemed solid enough under his fingertips. 

"It doesn't feel like a dream." 

"It is," Ronan said grimly. "Trust me, it is. I didn't mean to end up here. I fucking hate this one." 

"How can we get out?"

"We can't. _I_ can't. This kind of dream... I've just got to fucking let it all happen, until it gets bad enough that I can wake myself up. I can't wake up from all this _nothing_." 

Adam knew what he meant. It felt oddly hypnotic, this place, endless patterns of black and white and grey. Every step they took felt like going deeper into the trance. 

 

"Parrish," Ronan said suddenly, breaking the heavy silence. "Go home, damn it. There's no reason for you to stay through this shit." 

Adam gave him the coolest look he could muster, and tried not to notice the way Ronan's jaw clenched under it. "Don't be stupid, Lynch." 

"This isn't your problem. This is my nightmare world and you don't want to see the things that live in my head. You just _don't_ , okay?" 

"Ronan, I'm not Gansey. He'd let you save face on this one, leave politely and wait it out. But you're stuck with me, and I'm an asshole, and I'm not going _anywhere._ " 

" _Adam,_ " Ronan cursed. 

Adam scuffed the snow with his shoe. "Anyway... I'm not sure I _can_ get home. Your dreams are tricky." 

Ronan looked away. "We shouldn't have tried this." 

"We need any information we can get." 

"We're not going to find out anything here. This is just a dream. Adam? Whatever you see here, it's just a dream." His voice was suddenly concerned, and it made Adam feel worried. 

"I know. These are _your_ dreams, after all... You okay about, you know..." He didn't know how say what he wanted to. Suddenly, he wished it was Gansey who was here, standing beside Ronan in the snow, calm and collected. Not Adam Parrish, the earthquake to Ronan's storm, who never knew what to say or how to help. 

"As you say, this is _my_ dream. I'm used to it." 

_That isn't the same as being okay with it,_ Adam thought, but he didn't say anything. What was there to say? In this hollow, cold dreamscape, words seemed hard to come by. 

 

*** 

 

The snow was weird, Adam noticed. It was cold, but more than that; it was every night he hadn't been able to sleep for shivering, every time he'd desperately tried to breathe some warmth in his unresponsive fingers. It was the memory of cold, empty and sickening. He found himself craving any difference in the still horizon, any break in the trees. 

"Don't," Ronan muttered. 

"What?" 

"Don't think about getting out of this place. That's how -- that's how it starts." 

With a jolt, Adam realised Ronan was afraid. 

"So how can we fight it?" Adam asked him. "What if we just sit here? Refuse to move?" 

"It won't change anything. Eventually the dream will catch onto the fact I hate this so fucking much and then it'll get worse. I dunno why it hasn't already." He gazed at Adam. His eyes looked almost grey here, grey like the sky above them. 

"So it changes when you're scared of it?" 

"Dreams don't follow rules, Parrish." 

"What happens next?" Adam asked, but then he heard the noise. It buzzed and crackled around them, like a thousand live wasps being fried in a great, oily pan. He looked around frantically, trying to see where it was coming from, and with horror he saw the trees. Before they'd been dead and still, but now they were dripping and rotting, grotesquely, monstrously. The shadow poured off them like a sickness, soaking through the white snow, slithering towards them. 

"What..." he asked Ronan, but Ronan just shook his head. 

"Go home," he whispered. And the shadow reached them, pouring over them like tar, impossibly thick, all encompassing...

 

*** 

 

When the dream changed, Adam nearly choked on the smell of blood. He didn't recognise where he was. It looked badly put together, an amalgamation of hundreds of buildings, hundreds of dreams.

Ronan was kneeling on the ground, and Adam suddenly realised what this was. He knew, of course, the story of Niall Lynch. 

But when he went over -- hesitantly, awkwardly, unsure whether to intrude on Ronan's grief-- he saw that is wasn't his father's body lying on the ground, not this time. There were golden curls, mixed with the blood -- oh God, the _blood_ \-- but it was just recognisable as Matthew Lynch. _They have a secret handshake,_ was all Adam's brain supplied him with. _For whenever they say goodbye. Ronan once punched someone for laughing about it._ Even though he knew it was just a dream, even though he barely knew Ronan's little brother, it _hurt._

"Ronan," he said, "I think your dreams don't like us much." 

Ronan gave a harsh laugh. "Let's go," he said, getting up and wrenching open the handle of a door. Outside it was completely blank, like the sky of the snow forest. 

"Go? How?" 

"Like this." 

And Ronan stepped out into the void.

 

***

 

Adam had a vague impression of Monmouth Manufacturing, and half-wondered if he'd woken up. But then it wasn't any more, and then it was but not, and he knew this was still a dream. 

"We need to go in," Ronan said, but before he touched the _door-not-door_ he looked at Adam with expressionless intensity, like he was trying to convey something without words, and Adam had a sudden sense of dread. 

 

This nightmare didn't take a solid form because it didn't have too. The feelings were enough -- _heat, hornets, Gansey, death, decay._ Life, extinguished. Flesh, rotting. 

Adam grabbed Ronan's arm and held it very tight, and Ronan didn't pull away. His breathing was irregular and panicked, and Adam understood because they _all_ had these dreams, even Gansey. Especially Gansey. Despite how out of his depth he felt, he was suddenly incredibly glad Gansey wasn't with them. Could dream hornets kill? He didn't want to find out.

"It's not real," he managed to whisper. 

"I know, Parrish," Ronan said brokenly. "I know." 

 

*** 

 

Adam could hear them, now. 

The night terrors were closing in, chittering and hissing, attracted by the violence of Ronan's dreaming. They were shadows in the corners of his eyes, the places where _things_ were getting through. 

In desperation, Adam reached out for Cabeswater. 

Ronan started, like someone had given him an electric shock. "I can feel you doing that," he said. "Using the ley line. It won't work here." 

The hissing was getting louder, but suddenly Adam's fear was dwarfed by his anger. He was angry with himself, angry with Ronan, even angry with Gansey, although there was no reason for it. He was angry at this dream, for messing with people that _belonged to him, damn it._

_I am the Magician. I am unknowable._

He caught at something, and slashed it through the air, and the dream ripped, dumping them back into the snowy forest. The hissing of the night terrors abruptly stopped, then returned with renewed vigour. Ronan made a soft noise of admiration. 

When Adam looked down at his hands, he was holding a sword. 

" _Goddamnit,_ Parrish," Ronan said. "That was --"

And that was when the night terrors arrived. 

 

*** 

 

Out of everything Ronan had to fear, Adam was surprised it was a snowstorm that engulfed them now. But as the wind got louder, he started to understand, and wondered if Ronan was afraid that if he didn't keep moving he'd be overwhelmed by the storm that raged inside him. Time felt weird, like it could last forever in a single moment, and Adam felt like he couldn't breathe again. 

Everything was coming apart, including Ronan, although he was trying desperately not to show it. 

"Tell me what I can do," Adam said, sounding exactly like Gansey but unable to care. 

"Just... Don't be a dream-thing. Adam? Don't be."

"I'm not. I swear, I'm not." He carefully put his arm around Ronan's shoulders, the other around his waist, dropping the sword at their feet. He could feel the rhythm of Ronan's breathing. "A dream wouldn't do this, would they?" 

Ronan looked at him, their faces suddenly very close together. "Sometimes, they do," he confessed. 

Adam's lips twisted into a smile. "I bet I can do it better," he said, then kissed him. 

 

*** 

 

He couldn't stop shivering now. The snow was numbing, and he leant into Ronan for shelter. 

He heard Ronan say something, but it was inaudible over the howl of the storm. 

"What?"

"Go the fuck home, Adam Parrish," he said. "I'll catch up. Wake _up_." 

And this time, not looking away from Ronan, he did. 

 

***

 

When Adam awoke, the first thing he saw was Gansey's face. He was wearing a jumper that was such a weird shade of yellow Adam could only assume it had been a gift from one of Blue's family, Persephone maybe. 

"Oh, oh thank God," Gansey said, helping Adam sit upright. He still felt cold and shaky from the dream, and the sofa of Monmouth Manufacturing had never felt more homelike. 

"Gansey? What're you doing here?" He slurred. 

"Calla," he said breathlessly. "I was at Blue's, and she said you needed help, she'd seen it..." 

But Adam had stopped listening, he crawled over to the other side of the sofa to Ronan and shook him. 

"Ronan, wake up!" 

Gansey immediately followed suit, and when they'd managed to get Ronan properly awake, he said "Ronan, are you okay?" 

Ronan looked up at them, and said "Oh fuck, this isn't another nightmare, is it? No real person would actually wear a shade of yellow that horrendous. Dick, why." 

Gansey sat back and made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Jesus Christ," he said, trying to regain his composure, "Never do that again. You have no idea how it feels to be screamed at by a scary psychic woman that the two people I care about most in this entire world are _dreaming_ themselves to death --" 

"Gansey, we're okay," Adam broke in. "We're alive. We're okay." 

Then he looked at Ronan, slightly hesitantly, not sure if he'd crossed boundaries that Ronan hadn't wanted him to cross -- but Ronan gave him a shaky approximation of his usual grin. "We're okay," he confirmed. 

Adam smiled, and slapped Gansey's shoulder, and _breathed._

"Oh, Parrish, were you looking for this?" Ronan asked, and he passed Adam something that shone like fire in the evening sunshine. 

"Jesus _Christ_ , is that a sword?" Gansey said. 

"Hell yes it is. Adam summoned it with Cabeswater when we were in my dream, and I brought it back. Lynch Sword Delivery, at your service, motherfuckers." 

Adam gently swung it, and Gansey -- a little insultingly, Adam felt -- took two sharp steps back. 

 

"You two..." Gansey said, "You two are _incredible._ I don't... I'm so glad that out of anyone I could have met, it's been you. It could only have been you, for this." 

On an impulse, Adam knelt on one knee. Normally he would have felt beyond stupid, but with Gansey, it felt _right._ He presented him the sword like you would to your king. 

Gansey was just about to accept it, when the door opened, and Blue stuck her head round the doorframe. 

"The door was unlocked, so I..." She began, but stopped when she saw the scene in front of her. "What the hell?" 

"Just a little medieval roleplay, Sargent," Ronan said, and Adam choked. 

"Jane, our friends..." Gansey said, taking the sword and holding it before him. "Our friends are _marvels._ "

**Author's Note:**

> I love writing these characters so much. If you have any requests or prompts for more fics in this fandom, drop them in the comments and I'll see what I can do :D


End file.
